Chris Evert: “Anyone can be a champion.”

Women have been at the heart of Rolex from its beginnings, when founder Hans Wilsdorf strapped the world’s first waterproof watch to swimmer Mercedes Gleitze’s wrist. Since then, the brand has forged partnerships with myriad women who have made history. In an ongoing partnership with Rolex, V.F. charts the stories of some of today’s extraordinary pioneers.

Chris Evert first picked up a tennis racquet when she was five, and first realized she had the potential to become a pro at thirteen, when she lost a match to the world’s 13th-best player. Instead of feeling dejected, she was overcome by a sense of belonging, and knew she had the scope to compete with women of this standard. Multiple firsts soon followed. The first female tennis player to host Saturday Night Live, and the first to win $1million in prize money, Evert was ranked the greatest female tennis player in the world for seven years running.

When the firsts finished, Evert continued to rack up numbers. Scoring 18 Grand Slam® singles titles, overall she won 157 singles championships and 32 doubles titles, fashioning a career whose impact was felt far beyond the lines of the tennis court. “Playing a tennis match is very like life,” she says. “I think if you’re down in a tennis match you can still change the course of your life. It teaches you a lot about hanging in there and not giving up. And it teaches you a lot about belief in yourself.”

A defining moment in Evert’s career came in 1971 when, aged 16, she reached the semi-finals of the U.S. Open. She lost to Billie Jean King but ricocheted into the public consciousness, and immediately defied public expectation. As a child, she had a temper, and so her father (a professional tennis coach) advised her to become more reticent in her game adopting an air of steely mystery would keep opponents guessing. The quiet determination that followed flummoxed the media and public alike, who were accustomed to framing young girls as mild-mannered and cheery. “The English press thought a schoolgirl should be giggly, so they dubbed me the ice maiden,” Evert recalls. Her focus fed into the way she played tennis: calm, measured, accurate, she had a unique two-hander that, hit with a whole-bodied force, was like nothing else in the game at the time. “I was able to focus every point like it was match point and never lose my concentration,” she says.

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Shortly afterwards, in 1974, Evert won the French Open, her first Grand Slam title, propelling her to the status of international superstar, a position that motivated her to keep training and remain ambitious, whatever the scale of the upcoming competition. “In tennis, as an individual sport, you’re out there by yourself. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be fearful. In life and in your game.”

If Evert was careful and measured as an athlete, then as a symbol, she was revolutionary. A prodigy before prodigies became the norm, she was instrumental in putting women’s tennis on the map, assuaging the cultural scepticism levelled against young girls becoming professional athletes. Unfolding alongside the movement for women’s rights, Evert’s career became an emblem of the zeitgeist. Andy Warhol wanted to paint her picture. Fashion brands wanted her endorsement. Magazines covered her romantic dalliances with fellow celebrities (and even a president’s son). Blending her prowess on the court with the allure of celebrity, Evert became a thoroughly modern ambassador for the sport, and served eight terms as the president of the Women’s Tennis Association.

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For Evert, the defining moment of her career came during the 1980s, when another player had taken her number one spot. Her coach told her to change her strategy, and so she ran in to the net: something she never normally did. “I just kept telling myself, ‘You’re going to win.’ By changing my strategy mentally and physically, I finally beat her. That was a real breakthrough for me. I proved that you don’t have to be the strongest, but I made it happen,” she says. “And that’s my message to young girls. If they set their goals, if they work hard, anyone can be a champion.”

An inspiration not just to young girls, but women of all ages, Chris Evert proved that she could play the game in her way, and on her terms and still win.